Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame.
Department of Psychology, University of Maine.
Emotion. 2015 Dec;15(6):682-6. doi: 10.1037/emo0000070. Epub 2015 Apr 13.
The amount of information that can be perceived and processed will be partly determined by attentional breadth (i.e., the scope of attention), which might be narrowed in social anxiety due to a negative attentional bias. The current study examined the effects of stimulus valence on socially anxious individuals' attentional breadth. Seventy-three undergraduate students completed a computerized dual-task experiment during which they were simultaneously presented with a facial picture at the center of the screen and a black circle (i.e., a target) at the periphery. Participants' task was to indicate the gender of the model in the picture and the location of the peripheral target. The peripheral target was presented either close to or far from the central picture. Higher levels of social anxiety were significantly associated with greater difficulties detecting the target presented far from the central facial pictures, suggesting that social anxiety is associated with narrowed attentional breadth around social cues. Narrowing of attentional breadth among socially anxious individuals might hamper their ability to process all available social cues, thereby perpetuating social anxiety.
可感知和处理的信息量在一定程度上取决于注意力广度（即注意力的范围），由于消极的注意偏向，社交焦虑可能会导致注意力广度变窄。本研究考察了刺激效价对社交焦虑个体注意力广度的影响。73 名大学生在计算机双任务实验中完成了任务，在实验中，屏幕中央会呈现一张面部图片，而周边会呈现一个黑色圆圈（即目标）。参与者的任务是指出图片中模特的性别和周边目标的位置。周边目标要么靠近中央图片，要么远离中央图片。较高的社交焦虑水平与较远的中央面部图片目标的检测难度显著相关，这表明社交焦虑与对社交线索的注意力广度变窄有关。社交焦虑个体的注意力广度变窄可能会阻碍他们处理所有可用社交线索的能力，从而使社交焦虑持续存在。
